


Runaway

by levendis



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, F/M, First Time, Robot Sex, Sexual Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 06:28:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4614711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s embarrassed. And who wouldn’t be, to discover their anxiety over physical affection is so great they literally teleport away?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runaway

**Author's Note:**

> for a-carnie-and-a-cop, who prompted: surrogate partner therapy

The Doctor wants to kiss Clara Oswald. This is a fact they both acknowledge. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the Doctor kissing Clara Oswald - it would be a good thing, they both agree, for them to take this particular detour in their relationship. She wants him in her human way, and he wants to please her. And the intimacy has a certain…appeal.

It’s not working, though. The Doctor can’t kiss Clara Oswald. The Doctor also cannot be kissed _by_ Clara Oswald - they’ve tried that, of course. He sits very still and she leans gingerly in and then he'll suddenly be elsewhere. He winds up on Earth’s moon once, 1969, and only just avoids being seen by Buzz. Which is a shame, really, they need to catch up one of these days. Hopefully in a situation not requiring use of his respiratory bypass system and huddling awkwardly with his coat pulled over any exposed skin until his ride shows up.

He’s embarrassed. And who wouldn’t be, to discover their anxiety over physical affection is so great they literally teleport away? He doesn’t say anything emotionally revealing when Clara hamfistedly lands the TARDIS on the moon, and watches him remember how to exist in Earth-standard atmosphere. She asks him some basic questions: _Does that happen often? Can you do it on purpose? Why do I hang around with an idiot who frightens himself back in time and into outer space?_

Sometimes, maybe, he doesn’t know. He blushes, and takes an unsteady breath, and stands up on equally unsteady legs, and he walks away as she holds a hand out to him.

 

 

“Is it everyone? Wait, no, answered my own question. It can’t be everyone. And it can’t even just be me, we’ve hugged before, you didn’t vanish off to the Jurassic.” Clara Oswald, chin resting on her fist, examining him closely.

The Doctor tries not to fidget. “I haven’t done much research. But it seems to be tied to…certain things.”

“Like me kissing you.”

“Yeah. And the, the mood, sometimes. I know what’s happening, what’s going to happen. And then I - go.”

“Do you not want-”

“I _do_ want,” he says vehemently. “I do. Please believe me. I just. I dunno. Something’s wrong with me, I suppose.”

She smiles wryly, affectionately. “There’s a lot wrong with you. We’ll figure this out, I promise.”

 

 

The Doctor says he’s a virgin, in this body at least, and possibly that is the root cause of this. Clara scrunches her nose up and says ‘awww’ and snuggles against him, arm tucked around his belly. Nevada, the year 3021, this time. The ghost of the sofa cushions and her small human warmth still lingering as he tries to navigate Reno. He’s won 4,000 BitBux by the time she finds him. The look on her face, his hearts clenching.

“Maybe we should give up,” she says. “I like being your friend. The other stuff - it’s not more, it’s not better, just different. I don’t need that, okay?”

She means well, and he knows that. She believes what she says, even if he doesn’t. She’s a good kid, that Clara Oswald. But this is a failure on his part, and a failure that will create a divide between them. She will leave, one day, like so many of them have left, for a lover who can give her what he cannot. And because he’s greedy, because he’s needy and so desperately, shamefully attached to her, he puts on his very best Vanquishing the Evil expression and says, “I never give up, not ever.”

She looks like she thinks he believes what he says, even if she doesn’t. She looks beautiful, lit up in the neon glow of the casino. Bells ringing, their pocket of space, of silence, the slowness they create around them. Post-humanity swarming past.

He thinks about what her weird little face would feel like pressed up against his face. Tries not to sidestep away. A pull deep in his gut, time winds, his own personal coward-vortex. He shrugs. She waves, gives an awkward thumbs-up. Someone’s hit the jackpot, digital currency falling with fanfare into a bank account half a solar system away.

 

 

“I got you something.”

“Is it a pony?” He hopes it’s not a pony. What would he do with a pony? Shetland ponies are adorable, though, with their fat little legs. But no, no ponies on the TARDIS, new rule.

“It is not a pony.”

“Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

She sighs, affixes Complicated Smile #165, the one that tends to mean that she is being Very Patient and he should Shut Up Now. “It’s a companion.”

“I have a companion, you’re the companion. The Doctor and his Companion, that’s standard information, not sure how you missed-”

“Companion TM,” she specifies. _Tee-Em._ “It’s therapeutic.”

He circles the thing warily. Wedged into the console room, he’d only pretended to not know it wasn’t a pony. Of course he’d seen it. Six feet or so tall, wide, like a pile of modeling clay pushed into a vaguely humanoid shape. It smells like lavender and plastic.

“It’s remote-controlled. There’s numbers you can call, professional Companion Operators. Or I could…do it.”

"Do what?” he says absently, squinting into the maybe-mouth of the Thing.

“Talk to you. Touch you, without touching you.” She sounds like she’s still in the process of convincing herself that this is a good idea.

“And that would achieve, what exactly?” His finger inside the not-mouth, moving the clay up and around into a jack-o-lantern smile.

Sighing again, folding her arms again, looking at him again with that mix of kindness and frustration and the particular human ache. “Maybe we can ease you up to it. Get you used to being touched. It’s this or a prostitute, I mean-”

“No prostitutes please,” he says. “Not that I have anything against sex work. But I don’t want to. Not with anyone else.” Might as well out with it. Because he’s shameless and because what’s the sense in lying anymore, now that it’s gotten this far. When she’s purchased him a Thing that he’s apparently supposed to Do Genital Intersertion With, or whatever.

 

 

She leaves. He puts the ear pieces in and approaches the Thing, which is now affecting a faint holographic sheen. Cross your eyes and it’s nearly what you want, a blurry sailboat in a glitch sea. He closes his eyes entirely and lets it put its arm around him. Lets Clara put its arm around him.

Her voice in his ear, an approximation of a human hand on his chest. He tries to relax.

“You’re still here,” she says. Reassuring, or reminding, or asking.

He’s still here. He nods. The hand, the not-her-but-kinda-her hand, cupping the back of his head. “This is weird,” he says.

“Yeah. It is. But you’re _here_.”

The thing in his gut pulling, pulling, and he slides down on the sofa, fists clenched, as she says kind things softly and then urgent things with more force. Splitting into discrete pieces, the piece that thinks this is very weird and the part that is afraid and the part that, he assumes, is at least a little turned-on. If his previous experiences in previous bodies are anything to go by. Because it’s her, sort-of-her, and these aren’t friendly platonic touches. His shirt rucked up, the approximation of a hand on his bare skin. Her voice in his ears. A neediness, a nervousness all her own.

This is weird. He giggles. She giggles. She guides the approximation of a hand over his crotch, lowers it down, and squeezes gently.

He winds up on Skaro.

 

“Baby steps, got it.” The ear pieces are still working, thankfully. He starts running, she starts yelling about _sorry_ and _there’s a cave fifty yards to your left_ and _seriously I am so sorry oh my God Skaro why are you on Skaro._

“The next time,” he says, panting, fumbling his trouser button closed as he trips down a hill. “The next time I find myself halfway across the universe in the absolute last place I want to be, it’ll be 100% your fault. No Things involved.”

 _Fine_ , she shouts, staticky and frantic. _Just run. Go go go. Go faster._

(And he does, yes, sidestep to the middle of the ocean when a kiss deepens, and he’s certain he irreparably damages the time-space continuum when he comes in her mouth, but there’s no Things. And after a while, he tends to just teleport a few feet away, which is honestly really convenient because getting out of bed gracefully has never been his strong suit. And if she does suggest that she on-purpose fucks him into the bank vault, _why not, how else are we gonna get in there_ , who is he to deny her? Make the best of a weird situation, he’s always said.)


End file.
